Lucasfilm Does Battle with “Millennial Falcon” Over Band’s Name

Promo piece for the band which would have made for a way better in use sample than the one used.

Happy New Year to all! Pirated Thoughts is back for 2019 and starting with one of the most unique trademark registration applications I have ever seen. Lucasfilm is opposing a band’s attempt to register its name as a trademark claiming that MILLENNIAL FALCON is too confusing to Star Wars‘ MILLENNIUM FALCON.

Now onto this very interesting trademark registration. In June 2016, Ilan Moskowitz, filed a trademark registration application for MILLENIAL FALCON in association with the name of his band. Underneath his name, Moskowitz put as his aka, for some particular reason, Captain Contingency. Not sure if Moskowitz is a lawyer or not but he “pilots the Millennial Falcon with a rotating cast of amazing talent creating tunes…” If he isn’t a lawyer its not a laugh out loud joke, even if he is, yikes. That’s worse than my allergist who goes by the name “Dr. Sneeze”. As an in use sample, instead of showing the poster that can be seen to the right or the band’s webpage, he submitted a file of the band playing music. This is the first time I have ever seen this and if you want to listen to the band sing “My Heart Tested Positive for Someone Else” you can click here. Of course this specimen sample was refused. Sometimes lawyers do know a little and it’s best to use them. That’s why this application has been pending for almost three years.

On October 29, 2018, Lucasfilm, not surprisingly, opposed to registration of the band names claiming it was too confusing with its MILLENIUM FALCON mark. The test here is if you saw or heard the name of the band would you mistakenly associate it with Disney and the Star Wars franchise. Yeah, Disney has a good argument here as the names are way too close.

So did Moskowitz hire an attorney to deal with this issue? Nay, he is handling it himself. Moskowitz filed an answer to the opposition that included a claim that his registration of the mark is protected by the First Amendment. Disney made a motion to strike all the affirmative defenses. Did Moskowitz then go to a lawyer? Nay, one week later he filed a motion to amend his answer. Keep digging that hole.

Lawyers may be as slimy as Jabba the Hutt but they save you so much time, money, and effort when filing a trademark registration. Moskowitz would be smart to dump this registration application and make peace with Disney but seems like this battle will continue.